The invention relates to a foot-operated controller assembly which may be used to operate a surgical microscope.
A surgical microscope is used to enable an affected part to be treated to be viewed on a magnified scale for the purpose of a surgical procedure. During the surgical operation, both hands are unavailable to operate the microscope, which therefore must be operated by interrupting the surgical operation. To avoid this drawback, a surgical microscope is designed so that it is automatically operated by electrical means. However, it still requires the depression of electrical switch buttons to start or stop the operation of the microscope. In this end, a controller is already known which includes foot-operated switches. A surgical microscope is usually provided with a number of mechanisms including a mechanism for vertically moving the microscope body, an objective focussing mechanism, switches for turning a variety of lights on and off, a magnification changing mechanism where the objective is a zoom lens, and the like. It will be appreciated that the switches which are required to activate these mechanisms will total to an increased number, and if they are all incorporated into a foot-operated controller, the latter will become quite bulky. In addition, the presence of switches which are not used during a particular operation may cause an inadvertent operation of the switches.